<p>So i’m searching for houses for next year, and I come across these type of things.</p>
<p>“Graduate students preferred”
“Not a student rental, families preferred”</p>
<p>And then on applications, I see them asking for information such as…</p>
<p>“GPA”
“Extracurriculars”
“Major”
“What expenses do you/your parents/scholarships pay for?”</p>
<p>Are they allowed to ask stuff like this and discriminate like this when renting out their apartment?</p>
<p>i think so…as long as it’s not on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality…i think they can do what they want. my mom an di are renting a housing in new orleans after katrina and our landlord told us that we cannot have any visitors stay an extended period of time and if we have long term company we must inform him. those questions their asking you are just like the extensive credit check my mom had to go through.</p>
<p>i really don’t know for sure, but I think given that they own the property, they can choose renters by whatever criteria they wish.</p>
<p>With rental properties, many people are interested in one house…even if you don’t say you prefer families, it is quite easy when two people want the house to turn down the student. In any case, it’s allowed (and it makes sense! many students are partiers/messy), and they’re being upfront about it. Also credit checks are standard, to know what kind of debt you’re in, so it makes sense that they’re concerned with you being on scholarship and if you are maintaining a high enough GPA to continue having the money to pay both tuition and rent. So, most of those questions aren’t outlandish. Although I think your major at the very least should be irrelevant, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to indulge them. It is, after all, their property.</p>
<p>I would agree with rest of the replies.
Unless the information they are asking for is potentially discriminatory AND bares no relevance, the landlord can certainly ask those kinds of questions.
As has been said, they may not want to risk having students who are partiers or likely to damage property. Additionally, remember, they are legally responsible for what you do on their property, so they are going to do whatever they can to avoid liabilities such as a tenant drinking (underage) or damaging property.
As far as the major issue…who knows. I suppose there are certain majors which might be seen as “partier” majors, but that seems a little more invasive than need be, but I would not consider it discriminatory.</p>
<p>I think they’re just trying to get around laws that say you can’t refuse someone based on age, race, etc alone. </p>
<p>The law protects the renters more than the owners…so they kind of have to do that stuff so they can rent out to folks that they think are more likely to keep the property in good shape and pay the bills.</p>
<p>their property = their rules, discriminatory or not… they aren’t a public entity subject to anti-discrimination laws.</p>
<p>It’s called The Fair Housing Act.</p>
<p><a href=“http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/housing-discrimination/civil-rights-title-8.html[/url]”>http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/housing-discrimination/civil-rights-title-8.html</a></p>
<p>hmm, I stand corrected - although (with only the slight skimming i did) it sounds like it only applies to people or businesses who rent “for a living” (i.e. are in the business of renting multiple dwellings, etc.)</p>
<p>Oh, I didn’t mean to snap at you if you think I did, Icarus. I was just providing a link so any questions the OP had about what they could and couldn’t do would be cleared up.</p>
<p>Around here, it’s pretty common for them to mark the ‘nicer’ properties right near a campus as grad/faculty only, and they usually want to know how you intend to pay if you don’t have a full-time job, but I’ve never seen any of the other questions on an application or asked by the management or anything. Usually if they don’t want students they just say that you need to be able to cover your expenses without a cosigner.</p>
<p>They do this because we all know that all undergrad college students are drunken vandals and none of them are interested in living in a clean, well-maintained apartment anyway. Of course, they get a whole new personality along with their diploma at graduation so it’s ok to rent the nice ones to them then.</p>